Why should that be? Well, there isn't a single reason, of course. The strength of The Sun brand should never be underestimated, nor should its professional journalistic production values.

But the Sunday Mirror (I haven't studied The People as closely) has had a couple of good weeks in terms of editorial content. On a page-by-page basis - allowing for the fact that The Sun has many more pages - the Sunday Mirror has offered stiff opposition.

Indeed, on the first week, it did a great deal better than The Sun, as several of The Sun's staff conceded to me privately. It made no difference, however.

To get a real understanding of the reasons for the failure to capitalise on the opportunity afforded by the NoW's disappearance, we have to consider the failures of TM's management, meaning Bailey. She had eight months when her titles had no News International competition.

During that period it was crucial to lock in the new buyers in order to secure their loyalty. After all, it was no secret that Murdoch would eventually launch a Sunday issue of The Sun.

To woo the bereft News of the World audience it was necessary to invest in the papers, to spend on marketing and promotion. That has never been Bailey's way.

She is a one-trick pony - cut, cut and cut again. Her business strategy ever since she arrived at Trinity Mirror has been one of cost-cutting.

It made short-term sense to please the City. It has been hopeless in the long term. I've been watching the slow motion car crash for eight years now.

Yes, Murdoch is a gambler. His company has vast resources compared to those of Trinity Mirror. But why didn't it diversify year ago when it could see the perils of operating in a mature market?

Why has it allowed its flagship titles to wither on the vine? I'm not against cuts. I know they are necessary. But there has to be a moment when that is counter-productive, and I believe that point has been reached now.

When the latest round of cuts were announced I referred to them as 2012 newspaper reality. Then a couple of Mirror group staff took me through them step by step to show the effects on editorial output.

That presented me with an altogether more worrying picture. I realised that Bailey was requiring her journalists to produce papers on a shoe string. I can accept the new production methods - centralised remote subbing by PA and individual remote subbing by staff working from home - plus the use of freelance photographers.

But the creative news-gathering, feature-writing hub was also being destroyed along with the number of executives, who should be a paper's driving force because they commission. They are the people who have the ideas.

It is all very well to say that Richard Desmond's titles have even fewer staff and are still able to produce papers. So what? I can recall times when six of us produced Suns over the course of three days in the 80s, and there have been similar examples in strike-hit papers in the past.

A paper will always come out, but that doesn't mean it will be any good. It will simply be a semblance of a real paper. Any half-decent pop paper sub can turn agency copy into a "story" and create pages that look like the real thing.

That's fine for a while but real stories need reporters, as many reporters and writers as possible. Similarly, real papers depend on lots of people thinking creatively and collectively.

People may damn the Daily Mail but its technical proficiency comes from the interaction between lots of journalists. Its editor, Paul Dacre, knows that, and his greatest strength is his knowledge of how genuine newspapers are put together.

Bailey knows none of this. She has no newspaper nous. She has no instinctual feel for what makes a paper. Neither, of course, do the shareholders.

But those same shareholders - deprived of dividends and watching the papers strive for revenue - must surely recognise that their investment is in bad hands.

Some have expressed concern at Bailey's absurdly high pay. They should be concerned instead about her poor business strategy.

I hear that the new chairman, David Grigson, has indicated that he wants to tour the business. Let's hope someone he meets in one of the newsrooms dares to tell him the truth... and that he does something about it.